


this is what it's like to be alone

by Luridel



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2012-08-08
Packaged: 2017-11-11 17:25:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luridel/pseuds/Luridel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The aftermath of Arrival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is what it's like to be alone

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following prompt:
> 
> "FemShep is a very discreet person. She doesn't like to go out, talk more than is necessary, drink too much or crack jokes in the middle of a fight or anything of the sort. She's the kind of leader who doesn't need to raise her voice to be heard, to threaten to be feared, to put her disappointment in words to be understood. All in all, she's probably not an Infiltrator for nothing.
> 
> In short, I'd like to see a story with a very private, serious, professional Infiltrator!Shepard ;)"
> 
> The title comes from the lyrics to [this song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W0F1yeuLZU), which was the title of the original prompt (Everything you ever wanted to know about silence).

When given the opportunity, Commander Shepard turns herself in and comes quietly. She sits in shuttle after shuttle, ship after ship, as they bring her to Earth. Earth is not her planet. She was a colony child, and she feels no kinship. One of the shuttle pilots asks, with a smirk, if she blew up the relay as revenge for Mindoir. "Good work, if you ask me," the man says, his voice kept low. "Damn batarians had it coming."

She turns her head away and closes her eyes. She presses her eyelids shut tight and gazes into blackness for the rest of the ride. She thinks about the number three hundred thousand, and how many zeroes that number contains, and how many people are in each zero.

When she stands up from her seat, the pilot clears his throat. "Sorry, ma'am. What I said to you was out of line."

She walks past him without a word, stepping down from the shuttle and out into the night.

 

At her hearing, as evidence, they read the report she wrote up for Admiral Hackett out loud. Shepard stands silently, her hands clasped loosely behind her, taking deep breaths as a stranger's voice speaks the only words that she wrote in her own defense. She holds still. Stillness is something she knows, something she's learned and refined and mastered.

The report lists facts, clipped and emotionless. How she infiltrated the facility and reached Kenson without a single batarian casualty, but the two of them were forced to fight their way out. How she was all alone, couldn't contact her ship, couldn't contact the colonists. How, despite everything, she simply ran out of time.

She fixes her eyes on a point somewhere in front of her, staring right through the crowd and seeing none of them. She sees a sick batarian on Omega, thanking her, admitting he was wrong. She sees the countdown clock glaring down at her from every wall as the seconds tick away. She sees Amanda Kenson, indoctrinated, dead; she sees Saren, indoctrinated, dead. She sees failure after failure after failure until she's finally back within the walls of the comfortably generic room that she's been confined to.

 

When James Vega asks if he can get her anything, Commander Shepard hands the datapad over. "Paper?" he asks, and reminds her that she's still technically under certain restrictions. No letters to Palaven, to the Migrant Fleet, to Ilium. Not a word to her crew, or her family; two words that to her mean the same thing.

She nods. Vega drops the subject and gets her the things she asked for.

 

Commander Shepard is a model prisoner of the Alliance. She sits in her room and folds white squares of paper into tiny little cranes. In old Earth folklore, there are tales of children who have folded one thousand paper cranes to have their wishes granted, but in less than a week, she passes the thousand-crane mark and shows no sign of stopping. Vega gets her more paper upon her request.

Sometimes, she lets Vega stay in the room and watch her work. It's not that she's feeling lonely, only trapped, but allowing his presence is an investment of sorts. It's not unlike sitting on a crate and watching while Garrus and Tali repair the Mako, or standing around in Mordin's lab as he runs tests on everything he can possibly run tests on, or meditating with Samara for hours on end after some of their missions.

She threads her finished cranes on strings and hangs them across the ceiling from wall to wall. She's well past the two thousand mark and it's been over a week since she's heard any word about the Normandy's crew when she next runs out of supplies. As she hands in another written request for more paper and string, Vega looks down at the datapad and then up at the ceiling, and he suddenly has to know. "How many of these do you plan on making, ma'am?"

"Three hundred thousand," she says, softly, her voice a little hoarse from disuse but steady all the same. She turns away from the soldier, crossing the room to stand by the window. She places a hand on the windowsill and looks out at the sky. Above their heads, delicate strings of cranes hang suspended like ships in the air.


End file.
